Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

These are real weekly stats received by Muttville Senior Dog Rescue. On average, Mutville’s website receives 10,000 to 20,000 visits per week. It fluctuates depending on the time of year, news coverage, fundraisers, events, or campaigns under way.

Muttville’s website launched 5 years ago, and has steadily received this level of traffic for the last 3 years.

Interested in learning some of Muttville’s Marketing and PR efforts? Here is a list of some of the organization’s regular activities, both online and offline, to give you an idea:

Online Efforts

Blogging: Muttville posts 2-3 times a week. Every blog is shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Twitter: Muttville tweets every blog post, event, and dog profile as soon they are published. Profiles are retweeted until dogs are adopted.

Facebook: Muttville posts every blog post, event, and dog profile on Facebook as soon as they are published. They also have a custom Facebook tab with all links back to the website of each dog available for adoption. They also have custom tabs with links to various website pages: Give, Adopt, Foster, Volunteer.

YouTube: Muttville has accumulated a pretty decent library of videos. In November, we were pleased to have a new volunteer who studied film, and was interested in producing our very own Holiday themed video. Starring Muttvillle mutts, it was entitled “A Christmas Tail”. It launched December 22. By New Year’s Day, it had over 4000 views. Muttville plans on producing a documentary style video and a few more fun short films in 2012. A special video is produced every year and premiered at the annual fundraiser, Moolah For Mutts. This year’s video was called “Suma’s Story”.

Social Responsible Sites: Muttville is a beneficiary of various revenue-generating services, like KarmaWell, Rally.org and Causes.org. Participating on sites like these not only earns donations to non-profits like Muttville, it also offers a valuable Marketing opportunity for non-profits to share their missions and causes to new audiences.

Other Social Media: Muttville also uses Digg, Foursquare, Instagram, as well as countless shares to other sites, thanks to our supporters and volunteers.

Inbound Links: These are some of the highest sources of traffic. These sites posts Muttville’s dog profiles of adoptable dogs: The Shelter Pet Project, Petfinder, Dogtime, PetBond,Adopt-A-Pet. Weekly, these sites provide about 50% of the total site visitors. If you didn’t know the importance of effective inbound links, here are shining examples. Businesses can create similar traffic through affiliate marketing programs.

Email Marketing: Many Muttville supporters came to know this organization to adopt a dog or simply to offer a one time donation. Muttville continues to show gratitude to every supporter with on-going communication through email marketing efforts. Often times, the subjects of our newsletters are happy and positive, to share a success story from a fellow adopter, to share a personal heartfelt thanks from our founder, and sometimes to celebrate special occasions with our pets. Once a year, the efforts are focused for the annual Matching Grant Fundraiser.

Contests: Muttville enters many contests every year. The benefits are plenty – a chance to repurpose excellent collateral – videos, photos, and advertisements – produced by professionals (all volunteers). The marketing and promotion efforts for the call-to-action (i.e. votes or FB likes or watching a video) are shared with the company or business sponsoring the contest; it is a great excuse to team up with supporters; and the actions can be done by anyone who has access to a computer. Of course the biggest benefit are the prizes. This past year, Muttville won these prizes as a result of winning or placing in various contests: a new Toyota Sienna, thanks to the Toyota 100 Cars For Good contest, SF Giants star pitcher Tim Lincecum promoted a Muttville dog and spent time taking photos and video, thanks to popchips, a $10,000 grant and the title “San Francisco’s Favorite Charity” by 7×7 Magazine, and a $5000 grant from Sliderocket.

Offline Efforts

Weekly Outreach Events: Every Sunday and many Saturdays, Muttville has outreach events at retail locations, outdoor city locations with heavy foot traffic, and even their own established “pup-up store”. For two months, Muttville occupied a former retail store in San Francisco and held adoption events on Saturdays an Sundays all December and January. It was perfect timing for the holidays. Later this year, Muttville will have a permanent location on 16th Street near Florida St in San Francisco.

Speaking Engagements: Sherri Franklin is known as an expert in senior canine care, and she has over a dozen speaking engagements under her belt, not to mention countless interviews for radio, TV and news. Speaking for various organizations and fundraisers has created widespread awareness of Muttville’s senior canine cause.

News and Radio: Publicist Patty Stanton takes every accomplishment Muttville achieves and announces it to every media contact she knows. Plus, as Patty taught me, every accomplishment is a big deal if you make it a big deal.

Fundraisers: Who doesnt love a good party? There are many supporters that splurge all their support into Muttville’s one big night every year. Smaller fundraisers are always great too, and always can attract new traffic from the venue, location or the donors who the space, provide auction items, catering, etc

Socially Responsible Businesses: Similar to socially responsible websites, Muttville is always honored to be the beneficiary of a fundraising event hosted and organized by a business that supports Muttville’s cause. Muttville shows its gratitude by cross-promoting these businesses and including the events on our website’s calendar, which always is posted to Muttville’s Facebook wall and tweeted to our twitter followers.

All these efforts are donated by volunteers. If you don’t have staff, try interns and students help get you started on a few of these tactics. Or give Switchblade a call!

Are you one of the hundreds of business owners with a Yelp business listing who is frustrated with Yelp’s so-called fair selection of featured reviews? Yelp states on their website: “The filter establishes an objective standard against which every review can be measured. Even though it inevitably affects legitimate reviews from time to time and misses some fake ones, too, it helps protect the integrity of the site both for consumers (who will be less likely to be led astray by bogus reviews) and business owners (who will spend less time worrying about whether their competitors are writing negative reviews about them).”

In a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, business owner James Lee voices a sentiment that resonates with many business owners on Yelp. The article stated that “Lee contends that Yelp doesn’t play fair with small businesses, frequently filtering out positive reviews but leaving negative ones.”

“Yelp picks and chooses how they want to apply things for their own best interests,” Lee said. “They say it’s an unbiased, fair system for reviews, but they manipulate it as well.”

Rather than spend – or waste – time dealing with Yelp, where it is clear that a business owner can not have full control over their own listing that is on Yelp’s website, we’ve got better ways for you to use your valuable time – and showcase your best testimonials.

1. Where are all your best reviews? Probably you have a few on Yelp, a few on LinkedIn, and maybe other profiles like Google Places, Yahoo Local, and industry-based directory sites. Take all your best reviews and gather them into a single document, and include a link to each review’s original source.

4. Adding a Testimonials page to your website gives you the control of which reviews you want showcased, and it also gives you a place to consolidate all reviews from various sources. If a review quotes a business or client, you have an opportunity to link back to their online presence, which can be a subtle “thank you” for their testimonial.

5. Don’t forget to SEO this page! Make sure to include a sentence on this page that says something to the effect of: “Thank you to our clients for these great reviews we’ve collected from Yelp, LinkedIn, and Google Places (list all sources of the testimonials you’ve included on the page.) When you SEO the back end, be sure to include in your keywords for this page, “Yelp review, LinkedIn recommendations” and terms that include the source names as well as your business’s name, services or products. With good, strong SEO, you just might rank higher than your Yelp listing.

6. If you also have a Facebook business page, you can create a Testimonials page as a custom tab. Some apps like Woobox let you take an existing web page and drop it into a custom Facebook tab. You can simply designate the URL of your Testimonials page as the custom tab source. Otherwise, simply copy the text and paste it in. (See this example on small club’s FB page.)

7. How about a blog category called “Customer Review of the Month”? Thank clients and customers for taking the time to put in a good word for you. Showcase their business and review in a blog article, where you can also link back to their business’ website, and share background information on their product or service and also the service you provided to them, if this is applicable. (See this example on Ebisu Sushi’s website.)

Do you have other suggestions? Let us know! Please share with us in the comments section of this article. Or let us know what you think of these suggestions.

Did you know that you can integrate your Facebook and Pinterest marketing?

Yes, there’s a way to get Facebook fans to create exposure for you on Pinterest.

Establishing a large audience of followers on Pinterest is one of the most important aspects of a successful Pinterest marketing campaign.

Here’s the skinny: Although during the setup process you can choose to link your Pinterest account to your Facebook personal page, there is currently no way to automatically hook up to your Facebook fan page.

So what’s a business to do?

The truth is most business owners have not figured out a solution. They are failing on Pinterest because they think that they have to build a new following from scratch. Well, that is patently untrue.

Here are five ways to use Facebook to build your Pinterest following.

#1: Get a Pinterest Tab for Your Facebook Fan Page

The easiest thing to do is just go to Woobox and create a Pinterest tab for your Facebook fan page.

Easily get a Pinterest tab for your Facebook fan page from Woobox.

It’s very simple to do and requires little to no technical skills. Within minutes, you can have your Pinterest account in front of thousands of your fans! This way, whenever people come to your Facebook page to either check out your latest posts or learn more about you, they can also see that you are on Pinterest.

The Pinterest tab allows fans to view all of your boards and even your pins while staying on the Facebook platform. They will not be transferred over to Pinterest until they try to repin or comment on one of your pins.

Within just a few clicks you can easily create a Pinterest tab for your Facebook fan page.

Inside the Pinterest tab as seen on the Facebook fan page.

#2: Post Pinterest Links as Updates on Your Facebook Page

There are a few different ways to use your Facebook status updates to promote your activity on Pinterest.

One way to build your follower base is to share the direct link to your Pinterest page as a status update and tell your fans WHY they should follow you on Pinterest.

What helpful information or cool contests will they have access to? Are there exclusive promotions? Why should they follow you on Pinterest AND Facebook?

Example post of a Facebook status update promoting a Pinterest business account.

The more specific you can be about the type of value you are creating for your followers on Pinterest, the more likely your fans will join you there too.

#3: Promote Specific Boards on Your Facebook Page

On Pinterest, people can choose to either follow all, or just a few, of your boards.

Because of that feature, you may find success promoting specific Pinterest boards on your Facebook fan page.

I recommend you promote a few different boards throughout the week.

That way, you have the opportunity to showcase your Pinterest account to a wider audience on Facebook, and you can introduce them to the diverse areas of value shared on your Pinterest page.

There are two ways you can promote a specific Pinterest board on Facebook.

Update your status by uploading an image of a pin to Facebook. Add a description and include a link to the board on which that pin is featured.

Example Facebook post promoting a particular Pinterest board.

This works well if you have a really compelling image, because it will be granted more space on the Facebook newsfeed than a link.

Post the link to your Pinterest board as part of a status update. An image of one of your pins on that board will be automatically generated.

Generate a full board preview (photo and all) by posting the board’s direct URL .

Posting the link will also automatically include the text in your board description.

Make sure that you add proper descriptions of the content when setting up your boards. I’m always amazed by how few people take advantage of this opportunity.

Look how brilliantly realtor Raj Qsar utilizes this space for his branding purposes.

His board description reads:

“Raj Qsar & Premier Orange County Real Estate – is one of the most dominant Real Estate Teams in the Orange County Real Estate Market. For over 15 years Team Raj Qsar has held the philosophy to give the best service and most qualified advice to both buyers & sellers.

Implementing honesty and integrity at the highest level possible and to enjoy the entire process along the way. We are truly passionate about real estate.”

Take advantage of the description area below your board titles for adding value to your brand and board.

To add a description to one of your boards, simply click Edit Board and fill in the Description field.

Add a description to your board by clicking the “Edit Board” button at the top of your Pinterest board page.

#4: How to Promote a Particular Pin

Sometimes the best way to really serve your Facebook community is to highlight the value that you are providing in one particular pin.

This is a great way to get maximum exposure when pinning your own original content. Remember these posts can and will be shared across Facebook by your fans.

The same two strategies apply here, as they do to promote a specific board above. You can either upload the image of the pin as a status update (or include a link in the image description), or you can just include the direct link to the pin in your status area.

When you post a direct link to a pin as a status on Facebook, the following information will be automatically added and visible:

The image of your pin

The name of the board that includes the pin

The caption that has been added to your pin

So make sure you have fully optimized both your board title and caption for maximum impact. Focus on creating intriguing board titles and including a further explanation of value in the caption.

#5: Promote Your Pinterest Contests on Facebook

Contests and promotions are becoming all the rage on Pinterest. They are a very effective way to quickly add a lot of new followers and drive a ton of traffic to your site.

Unlike Facebook, there are no real restrictions regarding the way contests are promoted and hosted on Pinterest. A great way to leverage both platforms is to promote your Pinterest contest on your Facebook fan page.

Example of how Bergdorf Goodman promoted their Pinterest contest on their Facebook fan page.

Bergdorf Goodman recently promoted their Pinterest contest on their Facebook fan page by posting an image of one of the prizes with a brief explanation. They included a link to their blog within the description of the image where fans could find more details about how to enter.

Hopefully you’ve found these five ways to use Facebook to build your audience on Pinterest helpful. I know from personal experience that introducing your fan base to your presence on Pinterest is an effective way to get more followers.

Despite all the hype surrounding Pinterest, Facebook is still the largest social media network. Why not leverage the audience you have already built there and let them fast-track your success on Pinterest?

So what do you think? Can you see the benefits of using Facebook to get more followers on Pinterest? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

When I left behind corporate life and started this company in 2007, the first thing I was excited to do was volunteer with animal rescue organizations. No longer living within a demanding 60+ hour a week job, I couldn’t wait to explore the options. Becoming a volunteer at the San Francisco Animal Care & Control was the perfect introduction to the animal rescue world. It became an important part of my routine and I welcomed this new community of animal loving folks. Shortly before my first orientation at SFACC, my life also dramatically changed when Jazmin, my soulmate canine companion of 11 years, passed away at the age of 14. Losing Jazmin motivated me to give even more in memory of her and our life together.

Volunteering at the SFACC was a joy, but coming home to any empty place with no pets depressed me. I started searching local dog rescue groups where I could foster. I used PetFinder and googled “dog rescue groups”. Searching through the dozens of listings, I gravitated towards dogs I thought were probably “less adoptable”, either because of age or health concerns. I searched and found the saddest looking dog within 50 miles, saved by Wonder Dog Rescue. She was a 40 lb 9-year-old cattle dog mix with the saddest story I have ever heard. And she was indeed the saddest dog I ever met. I named her Frida.

frida and jedi

I also sent an email to Muttville Senior Dog Rescue to inquire about fostering. It turned out Muttville was in its first year as an official 501(c) organization. We luckily shared the same neighborhood. Another plus for me was its focus on senior dogs. Muttville Founder Sherri Franklin instantly became my hero and mentor, and “Muttville Manor” my second home. My first foster dog was Jedi, a chihuahua mix with irresistible big brown eyes. Jedi and Frida joined my home and it felt warm and inviting to me once again.

My role with Muttville quickly grew into so much more than fostering. I had just left a career as a designer and marketing specialist for 11 years, working myself to the bone, so that part of me wasn’t going to change! I basically took over as Muttville’s marketing lead and designer. The opportunity to combine my talent and skills with my passion to save dogs was invigorating! The role gave me the opportunity to work with more inspiring individuals behind Muttville: Board President, Jane Goldman, the V.P. of Lifestyle Marketing at CBS Interactive and founder of CHOW.com., and Muttville’s web development engineer, Carol Balacek. Five years later, they both continue to mentor and inspire me and are great influences to me as a business owner. As the Director of Marketing & Design for Muttville, I continually learn from the organization’s other team leaders who contribute their expertise in fundraising, public relations, event planning, and grant writing. As a team, we regularly collaborate and develop innovative strategies, challenging ourselves to improve upon the previous successes.

Four and a half years and 100 foster dogs later, my passion has led me to be a proud member of a community of inspiring, dedicated folks who have specialized their businesses and organizations in animals. For fellow pet-friendly business owners who create products or offer services or produce films, the most important aspect we have in common is our need to contribute to animal rescue. For those special leaders who successfully manage a rescue organization, who inspire a community to support their causes, I am honored to be a part of their work.

The California Online Privacy Protection Act requires a website to “conspicuously post” a privacy policy if it “collects and maintains personally identifiable information from a consumer residing in California.”

“Personally identifiable information” is defined very broadly to include a first and last name, a physical address, an e-mail address, a telephone number, or any other information that permits the contact of an individual. So, even if you are not selling a product, your website will need a privacy policy if visitors can submit their e-mail addresses to receive news and updates from you.

Privacy policies vary depending on how the website collects and uses consumer information, but a good example is the privacy policy for Modify Watches, which can be viewed here.

The key is to not only make sure the privacy policy complies with the law, but to also have the policy be easy to understand so visitors do not get frustrated with legalese when trying to determine how their personal information is being collected and used by your website.

Disclaimer: This post discusses general legal issues, but it does not constitute legal advice in any respect. No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information presented herein without seeking the advice of counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. Doug Bend expressly disclaims all liability in respect of any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this post.

This blog was originally published on www.bendlawoffice.com and re-published with permisson from its author, Doug Bend.

I’ve been reading up on tips provided by SEObook.com, and the latest tip is quite timely for us.

“The Value of a Google Rank” discusses how being ranked high for a popular keyword or search term can be the difference between your business being a success or being lost on Page 4 with no clients in sight.

We recently added a valuable member to our team, Jessica Greenwalt. A 6 year professional entrepreneur who studied Graphic Design at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Jessica is proud to say that her website, www.jgreenwalt.com, appears #1 for the search term “freelance graphic designer”. What does this mean for Jessica? She is overwhelmed with calls from all over the world, people interested in hiring her for graphic design and web development services. Needless to say, we are glad she is on our team!

The plugin developed by Carr Communications called Facebook Tab Manager has opened new doors for customization of FaceBook pages. Custom pages in Facebook were once limited to the FBML app that only allowed basic HTML. With the release of this app along with the upgrade to FaceBook Pages introduced on February 10, custom pages can now be built using WordPress.

So many new possibilities for landing pages, forms, engaging with FB fans , and another portal to access websites without leaving Facebook. We’re excited to offer these new possibilities to our clients!

Switchblade’s Sharp Tip of the Week

Does your website utilize a form for site visitors to contact you and/or give you detailed information you need? Using the Facebook Tab Manager, you can now put that same form as a tab on your Facebook Page. And if you use a service like Mailchimp, it can be a feed of the same form that lives on your website so you still capture data to single database.

Our client, Jessica Lanyadoo, was the first to give us the opportunity to implement this feature to her Facebook page. She relies on her form to schedule new clients and existing clients, so giving her fans the option to sign up on Facebook will surely fill her calendar for the year (After just one month after her site launched in January, Jessica was already booked through July.)

Congratulations to Muttville Senior Dog Rescue for their overwhelming victories in BayWoof’s “Beast of the Bay 2011” Awards! Voted Best Rescue Group and Best Canine Cause, Muttville has the special honor of winning both these awards two years in a row. This year, they won both categories by a whopping 46% and 40%, while 2nd place winners trailed at around 28%.

Social media and networking amongst their passionate volunteers surely played a significant role. Muttville does not necessarily stand out in their statistics for followers in comparison to Bad Rap, Wonder Dog Rescue, or Grateful Dog Rescue. Bad Rap has over 44,000 “Likes” for their Facebook page in comparison to Muttville’s 2200 “Likes”. Where Muttville does relevantly stand out in the world of online marketing is the quality and consistency in their messages.

On the surface, it might have appeared to be a challenge to implement a social media strategy system that would be executed solely by volunteers. In these last two years that Switchblade has been overseeing Muttville’s marketing strategy, it actually has made it easier. While volunteer staff may revolve and donated hours can be sporadic, having a consistent system in place with schedules and categorized messaging for blogs, posts, and tweets keeps activity flowing, where volunteers can contribute to a grid of opportunities.

We recently reported Muttville’s achievements in surpassing 1000 Twitter followers, 2000 Facebook followers and quickly approaching a remarkable 1000 dogs rescued. Muttville also averages over 2000 unique visitors to their website per week with over 10,000 weekly page views. The actual numbers aren’t a big deal, but the statistics in achieving these numbers is what makes a difference. Muttville is by far the youngest organization amongst their fellow nominees. Founded in 2007, Muttville has barely reached four years old this past February. Bad Rap and Grateful Dog have been rescuing dogs for over 10 years and 20 years respectively. Where youth may have played an interesting role in Muttville’s fast-growing achievements is in the foresight of Founder and Executive Director Sherri Franklin to realize the importance of embracing online marketing and educate herself in social media practices by attending seminars and contributing to the marketing activities.

Aside from all the social media and marketing statistics, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue holds a unique niche in the dog rescue community: Saving senior dogs! This worthy cause has become popular and recognized in the Bay Area substantiated by their “Best Canine Cause” Award. “I heard that we are the trendy and cool group to join,” said Muttville volunteer and publicist Patty Stanton. “We’re proud to share our good fortunes, like when we won a car on the ‘Oprah Winfrey’ show or when Gogol Bordello donated a show to us at Slim’s.”

At the heart of it all is, in fact, heart. Switchblade included, supporters and volunteers all do their part for Muttville because of passion, dedication, and just plain ol’ love for the old dogs. Thanks Muttville. And congrats!!

We know we’re good at what we do, and we were delighted by the increased site traffic to the newly launched 2.0 website we developed, designed, and optimized for renowned San Francisco-based Astrologer and Intuitive Counselor, Jessica Lanyadoo. The site had been stagnant for 5 years and since we built her site in Squarespace, she can now easily publish announcements and make updates herself.

What’s a website worth without site visitors? LoveLanyadoo.com numbers speak for themselves. We officially launched Jessica’s optimized website on January 4, 2011. Stats for launch week started at 862 views, and by the end of the month, traffic more than quadrupled. The search engine robots were catching on, also quadrupling in crawls by the end of the month. In its launch month, Jessica’s site accumulated over 4,000 views and 1,530 robot crawls with numbers increasing each week.

Optimizing the site for search engines had already been proven effective but at its fifth week, numbers multiplied by another 2.5! Jessica’s site has received over 10,000 page views and 3,000 robots hits.

Her Weekly Horoscope, Psychic Dream Astrology, once only available on San Francisco Bay Guardian’s website without an option to RSS or subscribe to Jessica’s column, now also lives at lovelanyadoo.com and allows her fans to get her weekly horoscopes delivered to their RSS of choice. Since January 16, she has received 26+ subscribers every single day, averaging 31 unique daily subscribers.

While we hope to refer business through this blog, we may have already done our duty with website design and search engine optimization. “I was overwhelmed the first month with almost 100 applications for new clients from my website. I am pretty much booked solid through July!” said Jessica Lanyadoo.

Sharenator.com recently evaluated the website of our client, Muttville Senior Dog Rescue. Back in 2009, Switchblade revamped their website into a modern, optimized 2.0 presence, and then developed a smooth running social media system that just hit over 1000 Twitter followers and over 2000 Facebook fans.

According to the stats provided by Sharenator.com, 1 in ever 1,111,111 internet uses visits www.muttville.org daily. That’s about 1500 daily visitors. And they also offered this amusing visualization:

Muttville Senior Dog Rescue is a non-profit organization whose mission is to educate, rescue, and provide homes for senior dogs over 7 years old. See what all the buzz is about! Visit www.muttville.org